-Another bit of a silver lining to a season that has had a lot of lead in it, we will get to see all eight Sweet Sixteen games this year with no overlap! In other words, I won’t need two different TV screens anymore this tournament!
-Oregon State and Loyola Chicago face off in a game that almost no one would have had in their brackets two weeks ago, much less predicted prior to the start of the conference tournaments. And, it should actually be a fun one! Loyola Chicago has been a good team all year, but no one expected them to control Illinois from tip to buzzer the way they did in the Round of 32. Oregon State was rather unspectacular for most of the season, but has been on a rampage since the conference tournaments started and now has a chance to get to the Elite Eight.
-I didn’t expect Nova to do much of anything in this tournament, and while some may argue that their bracket fell apart because their path to the sweet Sixteen went through a #12 and a #13 seed, I would respond by saying those was a damn good Winthrop team and a damn good North Texas team and I wasn’t really expecting them to beat either one. I have nothing against Nova, but for the third time this tournament I’m picking against them. Baylor is just too damn good and Nova still isn’t as good as they would be without the injuries. But…I’ve been wrong twice already.
-Oral Roberts has been on a crazy fun ride since the semifinals of their conference tournament. I’ve also picked against them twice (really four times if you go back to the Summit Tournament) and been wrong twice. I’m picking against them again today against Arkansas. This is a Razorbacks team that is on fire and that I think will win rather easily today.
-Syracuse is a double digit seed, and as has been pointed out that’s when they always seem to win big. Houston has had a magical year, and really a magical few years when you consider just how irrelevant they were in the college basketball world shortly before Sampson got there. They are now one step away from the Elite Eight and appear to have a rather wide path to going to the Final Four. I remember really liking this team back in 2018 when Michigan knocked them out of the Round of 32 with a crazy half court shot. Michigan went on to advance all the way to the National Championship game and while I don’t think Houston would have made it that far, I did think they had it in them to maybe win one more game and really get some limelight back on a program that hadn’t seen much in a long time. Well, the Cougs have certainly bounced back! Now all they have to do is get past a Syracuse team that, like a lot of previous Syracuse teams, looked mediocre for much of the season, but has looked amazing in the first two rounds of The Tournament.